


Past, future, present, promise

by Televa



Category: Tenet (2020)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Background Case, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Hopeful Ending, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Minor Character Death, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27612293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Televa/pseuds/Televa
Summary: For him, there was a beginning, a clear thing. The end, on the contrary, is all blurred now, a vague hunch with a form not yet clear enough to be anything else than a shapeless form of indefiniteness.Or; three major events in the Protagonist's life.
Relationships: Neil/The Protagonist (Tenet)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 36





	Past, future, present, promise

**Author's Note:**

> Oh hey look, another rabbithole fandom. Just what I needed!
> 
> So, uhm, yeah. This movie will live rent free in my head for the next four decades and there're so many thoughts and theories going around in my head - so much that instead of sleeping I wrote this. It's 5 am here, what the hell am I even doing.
> 
> Please let me know if there are any typos, thought errors etc. as English isn't my first language.

Life as he knows it, goes forward. Or so it has for such a long time it's self-explanatory, a thing nobody even thinks about and takes granted instead.

For him, there was a beginning, filled with screaming and swearing and hospital machinery beeping and _you are doing so well Samantha, you're so close, just a few pushes more_. Naturally, he doesn't remember any of it, doesn't know how quickly reassuring words changed into panic and even more beeping.  
His mother never told him about it so he doesn't have even the slightest clue how close it was all coming to an end right at the beginning.

For him childhood was nice, so many days filled with so much laughter and afternoons spent picnicking in the small park nearby. Days were spent with his mother as his father was far away on a tour, in a place he really couldn't pinpoint on the small globe on the nightstand next to his bed.

"Almost there, sweetheart," his mother had said as she'd taken his hand, pointing the finger in a small desert area that's placed somewhere in the Middle East. "Your dad is right there, somewhere under your fingertip," she'd continued, smiling.

"He's trying to do something good for this world, in his own way. Like I am doing my part here, being with you. Helping you to grow up and guiding you to be the best version of you. And, one day, when you're all big and grown up and your mind is filled with ideas, you will learn how to do that good in your own way."

"Mommy, does that mean I'm a task to you?" he had asked. It had sounded like that then, the remnant of the bedtime conversation stuck with him even this day. A part of him likes to believe he had been right. His mother had poked the point of his nose gently and smiled kindly, saying, "Never. You're so much more than that sweetheart, you're my entire life. And your daddy's, too. Never doubt that, darling." 

And then she had ushered him to bed and kissed the top of head for a goodnight, and the topic was dropped completely. 

In the end he had found his way of doing good, just like his mother had said he would. Or so he had thought, being three days over eighteen and holding fresh enlistment papers in his hand. The world was an endless stream of opportunities and chances and all he had had to do was to pick where to start from. Military had been his father's choice and suited him well enough until an ill (well?) placed landmine. 

The casket had been sealed and already delivered to the cemetery to wait to be buried before they even received the news. Efficient, clean, quick. Cold, even. No time left for sentimentality. 

Three weeks after burying his father, he buried his mother, too. It had rained on both days, almost horizontally, soaking the thick black coat he wore with shoulders hunched down. 

If military had suited his father, it will do for him, too. 

\--

It hadn't suited him at all, and being recruited for CIA had been nothing short of a blessing. Sure, taking orders was easy, delivering those orders was easy, falling into a routine was easy. Being scrutinized by higher-ups was almost easy too, it was the everything else he couldn't stand. Unofficial papers filled every corner of every desk, flash drives came and went in the same pace a cigarette was shared behind the school walls. Meetings off the record were held behind doors tightly shut from possible eavesdroppers and the whole paranoia of it all was making him crazy. It didn't help how some of his mates happened to know what was happening, where the next mission would take place, who would be the commandeering officer, like the precautions taken hadn't even existed.

Paranoia, it seemed, was justified inside these walls.

It had changed in CIA. There he had been given more than enough information in briefings, his questions were finally answered. The team of five they had was good, they were quite a force on the field, executing missions with brutal efficiency, leaving no time for mistakes. 

They worked well off the field too, often hanging together in Foster's apartment playing video games and watching films. Those had been good years, the group of them slowly becoming a family of sorts, sharing together the ups and downs of life, both work and civilian. He had been content then, happy even, and all the bad stuff in life was finally left behind. 

Then, the Opera mission had happened, a pill was taken, and life as he had known it ended with a soft _thud_ and all consuming blackness. 

-

Where once had been baggy camo suits was now sharp cut Brunello Cucinellis, Bogliolis, and when needed, classically styled Sartorios to help to blend in. In his adolescence wearing a suit had been strange, like wearing a piece of life that didn't belong to him nor he belonged in. Now, though, a suit had become a new piece of armor, a way to keep up appearances and let others underestimate him and his capabilities. 

Tenet had come into life with a bang, almost literally, challenging him in a way he didn't know he could be challenged. Being a quick learner came in handy as time was a luxury they couldn't afford.

The irony of it was not lost on him. 

Time itself, too, has lost all meaning while becoming more valuable than ever before, and had he not been such a quick witted mind the knowledge of it all would crash him.

Time goes forward, or so it did, as it now goes inverted, backwards, too and he really shouldn't try to make sense of it, should feel it and trust his instincts instead. But whenever he looks up and the birds fly backwards in a motion that shouldn't be possible, something like that really shouldn't exist even in the wildest dreams of mankind, but it does and it has and it will, a small hope-like feeling sparks inside of him.

If here's here, and he watches the world move backwards, it means he will exist in this moment in the future too, as the world is still standing. It means they have succeeded in the past future, right? 

Neil tries his best to explain it all to him, goes through the basics of theoretical physics and quantum mechanics. The way he speaks of it makes it all sound mesmerizing, beautiful almost, but so is the wide smile on Neil's face as he becomes immersed in his explanation of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and how it all has to play a major part in invertion of time. He is so bright in his brilliance and he can't look away. 

He has so many questions, so many theories how it all will play out, have played out, but Neil answers none of them, _What happened, happens, you should know it by now_ , and even has the audacity to wink. 

What a bastard. 

He sets aside the flood of questions in his mind for now and puts his trust in Neil with a quickly learned ease. He sees it though, the way he looks at him when he thinks he's unaware, and it's a dead giveaway of what will become some day if all what happens truly happened. Life goes forward and it goes backwards and forward again, all simultaneously in a way that shouldn't make sense but it does. There's a promise in the past future, and knowing it it's a bit easier to trust, to breathe.

His mother had told him he will find his way of doing good. She had been right in a way all mothers are when their children are concerned, he truly had found a way to do good. Going forward had given him the chance to become the protagonist he had craved to be ever since trying on his father's cap on a rare holiday back home. 

For him, there was a beginning, a clear thing. The end, on the contrary, is all blurred now, a vague hunch with a form not yet clear enough to be anything else than a shapeless form of indefiniteness. 

"You want any coffee?" Neil asks, raises an eyebrow and vanishes into the small kitchenette. 

"Yes," he replies breathlessly. 

A future in the past is a past in the future and a future in the future. It is a promise, too, and there is always hope in promises. 

He joins him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Leave a kudos and if you have time, a comment would be highly appreciated!
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @ too-spoopy-to-be-frukd, please let me know your ideas and thoughts about this fandom and this ship!


End file.
